Heartbeatz is a revolution in wearable visual dance tech. Utilising Infra-red reflection technology the device detects the heartbeat of its user and mimics the very movement of the blood in your veins with light via a length of Electro Luminescent wire. When listening to a song with a strong, constant bass rhythm the human heart will tune and begin to beat in time with it. The conception of Heartbeatz will allow any onlookers to be able to observe this process. When applied to a large crowd amazing patterns of light can appear throughout a club or event. However, the applications do not end there – Heartbeatz can be utilised in any other situation where a person’s heart rate might want to be observed but in a less formal way, for example keep fit classes, or children playing in the dark.

Heartbeatz is designed to be comfortably wearable using two adjustable Velcro straps to allow any size of arm to wear it. When the unit has been fitted, the wires can be hidden under the clothing with the converter box mounted on the opposite arm via another adjustable Velcro strap – making sure no loose wires are visible.

The heartbeat sensor can be easily and securely fastened onto the pulse of the wearer via a stretchable material that would fasten round the neck to provide the best reading for the unit. However with further advances in this tech it would be possible to mount the sensor almost anywhere on the body, resulting in a more subtle appearance.

Its been a stressful few days. The odds were against us – broken cables, terrible software and even component thieves (yes, some wise guy stole our voltage regulator!). But now… now the prototype is almost finished 😀 That’s right, she lives!

Basically, as your heart beats the wire will light up, depicting the users physical response to different types of music. Check out a video of it working 🙂

Below is a video we shot in the dark without all the masking tape. Works a treat!

There is an electricity in the air inside the studio;
Myself and Mike now have both parts of hardware working to a basic level.
We’ve just hacked our EL device and wired it into a relay to have it driven by the chip.
The final heartbeat sensor hardware is in development.

Some of you might have noticed the blog has been quieter than one of those new fangled electric cars recently.

So I will let you into the loop;
The shape that this project is taking is to illustrate the blood flow through your body – so that the changes to the music can be observed (did you know that your heart “tunes” to a bass beat?). The main piece of tech for this project is being able to measure the heart rate of our test subject.
We’ve been through many prototypes of using different methods, most recently lasers. They have all so far delivered results but none I am happy with.

However today we are switching to using infrared diode’s and phototransistors. The theory behind this is that when your blood pumps, the blood vessels under your skin fill with blood, which absorbs some of the IR light – instead of reflecting it. So if the IR emitter is set to reflect off ones skin into a phototransistor – a difference in level can be detected.

IR Heartbeat Detection

From here these readings can be fed into a string of results (or an array) using the PicAxe chip. From here the heartbeat of the subject can be calculated, and any errors can be smoothed or corrected. From this point it is as simple as creating another array that more or less tells the chip how many pulses each “BPM” should have.

From here the chip can operate a relay which will light a length of EL (Elecrto-Luminescant) wire which will be arranged to mimic or simulate the wearers veins. The final design is set to fully cover both lengths of arm – however at this stage the length of one forearm will be used.

Stay tuned!
– Allan
*Copied & Edited from my blog over at Life By Design